Q: Wifi Constantly Dropping in Lion

It's been already 2 days, where is the update fix for this? I'm on a 2011 MBA and I'm having this issue happen almost every time I come back to the computer after being away for more than a few minutes. There's no reason why this worked perfectly with Lion but all of a sudden it's not with Mountain Lion, it's a bug! The MBA can't even take a network cable, it's only WiFi, this is urgent!

It's actually been a year, not just 2 days... You're just suffering the "Lion" bug in a delayed reaction.

Ha....many of us have been waiting over a year for a real fix...

If it's really urgent I recomend that you go buy a USB Wi-Fi device.  They are only about $15

I would downgrade to Lion before I do that, Mountain Lion is not that exciting after all. In addition to this bug, all of a sudden the scrolling on the trackpad is accelerating, iCloud Tabs are just not working, and the whole notification center thing is overrated.

DRW9 wrote:

 

anyone that does have issues: try enabling debugging with this command:

sudo /usr/libexec/airportd debug +alluserland +alldriver +allvendor +LogFile

 

or you can replace IO80211Family.kext with the one from Snow Leopard.

Lion introduced incompattiblities with certain pieces of wireless hardware. There have been a lot of theories as to what exactly is causing these incompattibilities and a lot of possible fixes you coudl try (Google it). Unfortunately, for many people (myself included), none of the fixes, nor the updates to Lion, have fixed the issue.

That said, it is likely that if you bought a new wireless router (or used a USB wireless card, instead of your built-in card) it would start working again, because you have removed the incompattible piece of hardware.

But I'm cheap, so I just downgraded back to Snow Leopard.

When I put the line in it asks for a password but it won't let me type it in.

I finally got it to turn on debugging.

Thanks

delventhalz wrote:

 

That said, it is likely that if you bought a new wireless router (or used a USB wireless card, instead of your built-in card) it would start working again, because you have removed the incompattible piece of hardware.

I've had the same problem with multiple routers in different locations, so I doubt it's that.

Including: 2 Buffalo n routers, AirPort Express and a Netgear DG834G

Well turning on debugging didn't help.

DRW9 wrote:

 

I've had the same problem with multiple routers in different locations, so I doubt it's that.

Including: 2 Buffalo n routers, AirPort Express and a Netgear DG834G

Huh, that honestly surprises me. Though this problem has been extremely nebulous from day one, affecting diferent users in different ways.

My recommendation:

If this is a new computer you bought with Lion or Mountain Lion pre-installed I would try and get the wireless card replaced if you are under warranty.

If this is an older computer you upgraded to Lion or Mountain Lion, downgrade to Snow Leopard.

2010 MBP, but it's been fine for about 9 days now (I didn't do anything except enable debugging), if it comes back I'll get the Snow Leopard driver out a backup.

I did downgrade to Snow Leopard at one point, but almost every time I rebooted my filesystem got corrupted so I gave up and restored.

And you wonder why your computer does not work... Stop using that router that your grandmother gave you.

YOU ARE RIGHT!  SHE SHOULD NEVER OF PURCHASED THAT APPLE TIME CAPSULE FOR ME!   NO WONDER IT DOESN'T WORK!!!

like an idiot i decided to upgrade both my 2011 Air and 2011 iMac around the same time to Mountain Lion.  Both are having wifi issues, not been able to find any work around so far.  For now, I connected my Air to the csico router via ethernet, and turned into a hotspot.  No issues if the iMac goes through the Air over wifi, but breaks if it goes through the Cisco router over wifi.  The cisco router is a wifi capable DOCSIS cable modem from Starhub (Singapore), my current ISP.